Tales From the Metalnomicon: Fresh Blood (On the Page)

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors…
Today the Metalnomicon offers up introductions to two brand new publications with pounding, bleeding heavy metal hearts…

All this time we thought we could only listen to, or play instruments, or scream our metal. But we can write it, too.

So avers the incomparable Kriscinda Lee Everitt in the introduction to the endlessly awesome, horns decidedly up first issue of her dark, dark fiction mag Despumation, a repository for stories and poems inspired by — and infused with the ineffable spirit of — such stalwart sonic icons as Dio, Voivod, Megadeth, Judas Priest, and Candlemass.

Or, as Everitt puts it, a “writing experiment”:

We’re seeing if there are things inherent in metal that are conducive to a particular kind of writing. Songs based on books can lead to short stories that have nothing to do with the original source. Stories in songs, brief as they are, can find new, fleshed out life when stretched and sprinkled with a fresh helping of new imagination over 3000-5000 words. And words can be borrowed and implements, supplemented, played with and chewed over. It can be funny. We can write about murder and swordplay and Vikings and neurosis and everything. We can use words like serrated, bone, rotting, pulverized, blood, grave, bludgeon, raw, mincing, brutalized, tears. Ts like knives, Os like screaming mouths, Vs and Zs like buzzsaws, Gs like muted, chugged chords.

As a bonus, the inaugural issue includes Metalnomicon alumni Dustin LaValley and Dean Swinford.

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Next up is EVILSPEAK, a new magazine from the First Couple of Heavy Metal Horrordom Billy and Vanessa Nocera — i.e. the dynamic duo behind Razorback Records.

Perhaps we should’ve seen a really-smart-yet-grimy mag based around esoteric/cult horror cinema coming down the pike when Vanessa’s melodic death metal band Howling released an ode to the late, legendary horror culture writer Chas Balun last year, but who could’ve guessed it would be this good?

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After declaring “Horror’s chosen warriors will rule the apocalypse” atop the intro note, EVILSPEAK barrels headlong into a series of in-depth essays on such gruesome fare as Mountaintop Motel Massacre, Humanoids From the Deep, the “Blood Island” trilogy, and The Demon Lover, while various other interviews, ephemera, and columns from former Impetigo madman Stevo do Caixão, Donald Farmer, and William Sievers ooze out from the pages in between.

All this and an exquisitely grotesque layout, too.

Which is to say, EVILSPEAK is as edifying as it is horrifying…

It takes no small amount of chutzpah to launch a new mag these days. Here are two well-deserving of your time and hard-earned cash. Click on through and keep the dream alive!